Matt Gurney: Mississauga’s embarrassment not meddling media’s fault

Remember those old Scooby-Doo cartoons where Shaggy and the gang would foil the bad guy’s plot, leaving said antagonist furiously sputtering about how they’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids?

They’ve been brought to life at Mississauga city council, where Mayor Hazel McCallion and assorted councillors are up in arms over revelations by National Post reporter Megan O’Toole.

While admittedly embarrassing, the revelations were hardly devastating. Ms. O’Toole was given documents showing that Mississauga was offering to provide two tickets (worth $700 total) to each councillor for Ms. McCallion’s 90th birthday bash, which was doubling as a fundraiser for Sheridan College.

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Parties are nice, fundraisers are grand, but we’re in Fiscally Challenging Times here, and politicians getting free tickets to a party seems out of whack with the current zeitgeist.

But not as out of whack as the response to Ms. O’Toole’s story. The offer to provide the tickets on the taxpayer’s dime was swiftly withdrawn, but that wasn’t the end of it.

Councillor Katie Mahoney asked that city resources be used to check out computers, fax machines, BlackBerrys and printers to see if the leaker can be identified, and compared the disclosure of the party plans to the WikiLeaks security breach.

Why, yes, councillor, the release of thousands of secret military reports covering two ongoing wars, and diplomatic cables between the world’s great powers, is exactly comparable to Ms. McCallion’s party.

The Mayor herself hasn’t taken it much better. Rather than admit the issue was silly while reiterating that the offer to provide tickets was withdrawn, she went before council to criticize Ms. O’Toole and lament the lack of “trust” within the city government.

Mayor, trust isn’t just something to be valued inside a government. The people need to be able to trust that their elected officials will spend their money well, and respond with dignity when caught doing otherwise. Perhaps it would be better to worry a little less about who in the city government would dare move against you, and a little more about whether you’re giving the people who elected you the kind of sound fiscal management and responsible leadership they deserve?

Then again, merely lashing out at a reporter and fondly recalling the good old days before leaks (presumably meaning prior to Watergate) is a measured response compared to how she reacted when reached by NewsTalk 1010 on Tuesday. Ms. McCallion compared the birthday party report to the Tucson shooting, calling that mass murder a “good example” of the consequences of reporting on controversial subjects.

Pardon?

There’s an object lesson here about knowing when to link birthday parties to massacres, but we’ll skip over it in favour of another lesson with broader appeal: It’s never the initial dumb idea that people remember. It’s the self-righteous over-reactions of those caught in the dumb idea that leave a mark. No municipal official ever need fear the public knowing what they’re doing with the public’s money so long as such money is being used wisely. Your own embarrassment only serves to indict you.

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